Refreshing any page gives 404

The most common single failure in apps built with Lovable, Bolt and Replit — and the one with the shortest fix.

Seen in apps built with Lovable, Bolt, Replit.

What is actually happening

A single-page app is one HTML file plus a bundle of JavaScript. Inside the app, clicking a link rewrites the address bar in the browser without asking the server for anything.

Reloading, or opening a link somebody sent, asks the server directly. The server looks for a file called `pricing`, finds nothing, and answers 404. Your app is intact — it was simply never loaded.

The preview provided by the builder answers every address with the same HTML file, which is why it works there. A plain static host does not do that unless it is told to.

Confirm it in one command

curl -sI https://yourapp.com/pricing | head -1

HTTP/2 200 means the server answers for that address. 404 means nothing does, and the app never gets a chance to load.

Fixing it yourself

• On Netlify: a file called `_redirects` in `public/` containing `/* /index.html 200`.
• On Vercel: a `vercel.json` with a rewrite of every path to `/index.html`.
• On your own nginx: `try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;` inside the `location /` block.
• Test it the same way afterwards: request an inner route with curl and expect 200.

Where it stops being a small job

When the same rule breaks your static assets — a rewrite that catches everything will happily return HTML for a missing JavaScript file, and the browser then reports a syntax error in code that is fine. Getting both right at once is where this stops being a five-minute job.